--- title: "What brings a higher-order entity into focus of attention? Sentential pronouns — Borthen 1997" description: "A listening test with 30 Norwegian subjects shows the effect: with unaccented \"det\", most readers link a following… 11 references, cited by 1 paper here." authors: ["Kaja Borthen", "Thorstein Fretheim"] year: 1997 venue: "Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts" source: "https://aclanthology.org/W97-1313/" doi: "10.3115/1598819.1598832" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/borthen-1997-what-brings-higher-order-entity/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/borthen-1997-what-brings-higher-order-entity/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1997](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1997/) / What brings a higher-order entity into focus of attention? Sentential pronouns in English and Norwegian. # What brings a higher-order entity into focus of attention? Sentential pronouns in English and Norwegian. **Authors:** Kaja Borthen, Thorstein Fretheim and Jeanette K. Gundel · **Year:** 1997 · **Venue:** Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts (workshop, ACL) **Link:** [aclanthology.org/W97-1313](https://aclanthology.org/W97-1313/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) (ACL Anthology, before 2016) — summary only [**18** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2038278111) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 · **1** citations in our library of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read · [Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/W97-13/) · [licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) - [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W97-1313/) - [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W97-1313.pdf) - [DOI 10.3115/1598819.1598832](https://doi.org/10.3115/1598819.1598832) - [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2038278111) **Authors (2)** 1. [Kaja Borthen](https://openalex.org/A5003776668) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1183-6415) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2770174) · h 9 · 340 citations · 37 works 2. [Thorstein Fretheim](https://openalex.org/A5086919406) [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/2575907) · h 17 · 979 citations · 83 works Citations and author metrics: OpenAlex, 2026-10-14; authors with the same name are not always told apart. ## What it is about The paper asks which factors decide whether a pronoun refers to a higher-order entity, such as a fact or a situation mentioned in an earlier sentence. Using the Givenness Hierarchy of Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993), it argues that English "it" and Norwegian unaccented "det" need their referent to be in focus, while "that" and accented "DET" need only an activated referent. A listening test with 30 Norwegian subjects shows the effect: with unaccented "det", most readers link a following "henne" ("her") to the more distant antecedent, and with accented "DET" to the closer one (for example 23 of 30 against 7 in one text). Reaction times differ by about 600 ms between the two versions. The paper also argues that repeating an implicit content in the second sentence brings it into focus, and that an interviewer's question can make a fact salient without prior mention. ## For Mova - I1. `coref/src/sieve.rs`: add a pass for sentential pronouns (an "it" or "that" whose antecedent is a clause, not a noun phrase). The candidates are clause-level events from `prag/src/frames.rs`, ranked by the focus rule (the subject of the last matrix clause). Measure on a hand-written set of sentential pronoun cases, with a control where noun candidates are ranked first, which must score lower. - I2. Feature for `coref/src/mention.rs`: mark "it" and "that" as focus-tracking and activation-only forms, and let the feature block the link when the candidate is not the last topic. Measure with coref CoNLL F1 on the subset of pronouns. - I3. `world/src/narr.rs`: an implicit object repeated from an earlier clause (the paper's "answer" = "answer Gro's question") raises the focus of its content. Add a rule that re-activates an event when a later clause elides its argument, and test it on a short story set. The English chapter is [languages/en/35-reference-and-coreference.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/35-reference-and-coreference/), with [languages/en/36-discourse-relations.md](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/36-discourse-relations/) for the focus effects. The code is `coref/src/sieve.rs` and `coref/src/mention.rs`, plus event structure in `world/src/narr.rs`. The measures are coref F1 on a held-out set of sentential pronouns and a reversal control. The Norwegian experiment is for context only; its reaction-time evidence cannot be reused without a new experiment. ## Institutions [🎓**University of Minnesota** Minneapolis · United States 8 works · 1,732 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-minnesota/) · [🎓**Norwegian University of Science and Technology** Trondheim · Norway 4 works · 1,166 citations](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/norwegian-university-of-science-and-technology/) ## Cite Cite as Kaja Borthen and Thorstein Fretheim. 1997. What brings a higher-order entity into focus of attention? Sentential pronouns in English and Norwegian. Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts. The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.3115/1598819.1598832](https://doi.org/10.3115/1598819.1598832) ```bibtex @inproceedings{borthen1997what, title = {{What brings a higher-order entity into focus of attention? Sentential pronouns in English and Norwegian.}}, author = {Kaja Borthen and Thorstein Fretheim}, booktitle = {Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts}, year = {1997}, doi = {10.3115/1598819.1598832}, url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/1598819.1598832} } ``` - [← previous CogNIAC: high precision coreference with limited knowledge and linguistic resources](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/baldwin-1997-cogniac-high-precision-coreference-limited/) - [next → Enriching lexical transfer with cross-linguistic semantic features or how to do interlingua without interlingua](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nasr-1997-enriching-lexical-transfer-cross-linguistic/) - [↑ back to papers of 1997](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1997/) ## References 11 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Ariel, Mira (1988) "Referring and accessibility." Journal of Linguistics 24. 67-87. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ariel%2C+Mira+%281988%29+%22Referring+and+accessibility%2E%22+Journal+of+Linguistics+24%2E+67%2D87%2E) 2. Fmurud, Karl (1992) Processing Noun Phrases in Natural Discourse. Ph.D. Thesis. Stockholm University, Dept. of Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fmurud%2C+Karl+%281992%29+Processing+Noun+Phrases+in+Natural+Discourse%2E+Ph%2ED%2E+Thesis%2E+Stockholm+University%2C+Dept%2E+of+Linguistics%2E) 3. Fretheim, Thorstein (1997) "Accented and Unaccented Situation Anaphom: do they work the way we expect them to?" Paper presented at the conference on Grammatik i Fokus, Lund, February 6, 1997. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fretheim%2C+Thorstein+%281997%29+%22Accented+and+Unaccented+Situation+Anaphom%3A+do+they+work+the+way+we+expect+them+to%3F%22+Paper+presented+at+the+conference+on+Grammatik+i+Fokus%2C+Lund%2C+February+6%2C+1997%2E) 4. 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